<Begin Segment 31>

MC: When we were talking about your law school experience, one of the things that struck both Alice and me is your sense of anger when you had read in your Constitutional Law class the original Korematsu v. United States case. And I'm assuming that that sense of anger and sort of righteousness and principle is what animated your later effort as his lawyer, trying to vacate that original conviction. How do you explain being able to hold in, you know, in, in one whole sort of view of the law, that sense of anger and also this sense of perhaps the redemptive potential of law, or as you described before, the sense of idealism and skepticism towards the law? How do you explain the ability to hold those two opposites together?

LB: I think it really comes from perhaps something I mentioned earlier, a different view of the law, that one has to view the law as not a static institution. If one viewed the law as a static institution, that is, a set of rules that we all have to live by and we're stuck with them, I think it would be a very bleak world. We would be stuck with segregation, we would be stuck with the glass ceiling, we would be stuck with poverty forever. Now, we may be stuck with poverty forever, but I think that one has to see the law as an animated entity, as something that can be used like a tool, like you would use a hammer or a screwdriver or a saw, something that you could use to build something. And I think it's that view of the law that's the only thing that keeps me going in it, the view that, yes, the law can be a vehicle for grave injustice, but, that same vehicle can be used to cure injustice and to make things right, and the key is just knowing how to use that tool. And if you're a person of color in this society, if you're wanting to serve the needs of disenfranchised people, you have to view the law as a tool for change and believe that it can be used that way. Now it can't be used that way successfully all the time, certainly not often enough to please me. But it can be used, and you just have to know it well enough and be good and well-skilled enough to be able to find the way to make it work for you and the community you're seeking to serve.

So I think that healthy skepticism can co-exist with a sense of optimism because I think that the law is a fluid institution. It is not and it will never be as fluid as I think it should be. But I blame that not necessarily on the law, but I really blame that on the people who administer the law, enact the law, enforce the law, and interpret the law. Because after all, they're only human beings. So to the extent that we can get more minorities and more people from different perspectives in positions enacting the law, interpreting the law, applying the law, then the law will continue to be a living, changing, animated institution.

MC: Uh-huh. So it's, you seem to be suggesting that law can be responsive to the needs of everyone in society, but it's still even now dominated too much perhaps by a certain set of perspectives, that, that people in law or in legal education are still not diverse enough to represent the society that, that, that the law really needs to, to structure.

LB: I think that's very true. I mean, if you look at the vast numbers of people of color, minorities, in this country, and that percentage is growing and growing every single day, to the point where the majority in this country will be minority or people of color, and you compare that to the really very small numbers of minorities in positions of political power, that is, in the legislatures, in government, in corporate America, high-level management positions in corporate America, and the number of lawyers who are minorities, it's very, very small. The doors continue to be, if not totally closed, just slightly ajar to people of color in this country. And until that changes, the law will not be that being that responds to the needs of minority or disenfranchised people because it's only people who apply the law.

<End Segment 31> - Copyright © 2000 Densho. All Rights Reserved.